I truly don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I am now sporting a purple racing strip down my right side, waist to armpit. This new fashion addition really compliments the darkened finger of my last post, which has just recently quit throbbing. I acquired this new look while working on the house we are remodeling. Two weekends in a row this amateur carpenter has injured himself. This time it was funny, but could have been serious. I was spraying loose insulation in the attic….you already know don’t you!, you can see it coming.
This small house we want to be very energy efficient, I would claim it’s my love for the planet, but really I just hate the electric bill in summer and the gas bill in the winter. According to the guy at our local hardware store 12 inches of attic insulation would be very appropriate for our area. Forty bags of loose fill insulation made of recyclable materials, one 75 lb blower, and 100 feet of hose carted then unloaded at the work site.
I in the attic, my wife, DeAnn. by the blower. She fills the blower and manages the down stairs part of this project, I don dust mask and spend the next few hours in a dust filled maze of 2 by 4 rafters, tv cables, recessed light fixtures, and electrical wires. Near the end of my term in this high office, with each of the 3 ½ in tall rafters fully covered in at least 7 inches of insulation I miss step, I either slip off of or miss the 1 ½ inch wide rung altogether.
Half inch sheet rock really doesn’t slow a body of my size down, but 2 by 4 rafters do, at least by the time they reach your arm pit. As I said earlier DeAnn manages the down stairs portion of this project. It was up to her to decide whether to push me back up or pull me down so we can fix then finish the project.
Maybe I was in a hurry, maybe I wasn’t being careful enough, maybe I wasn’t qualified for the work, maybe it was the shoes, maybe it was just the odds, maybe it was just an accident. Whatever the reason both the house I was working on and my body took a little damage.
I look at our economy that has fallen through the roof, it’s taken some damage, maybe its Obama’s fault, maybe Bush’s, maybe neither were careful, maybe neither were qualified, maybe it goes further back, maybe it was just an accident, just the odds. Maybe it was the maze of issues and the dust of conflicts that hid the next step from view, or just maybe we have had some well meaning amateurs running things.
We voters here managing the downstairs are going to have to decide, who gets pushed back up and who gets pulled down. Let’s see if we can find some real pros before it gets any more serious.
David
